Via Crucis for
chorus and organ — not chorus accompanied
by organ, but chorus and organ in dialogue
— is one of Liszt’s very finest works.
This is the best performance and recording
of it I’ve ever heard.

One might be amazed
that I would be so enthusiastic for
Liszt’s religious music since to say
that I adhere to a different faith would
be an understatement. However I believe
that the religious impulse is a human
universal. Liszt, like Bach, was able
to express that universal in his religious
music.

Amazingly, the organ
can be replaced by the piano to very
good effect as it is in the Liszt Digital
recording. Obviously the fearsome terror
of the moment is projected less awesomely,
but this remains a valid alternative
performance. The Hungarians perform
with rather more conventional religiosity,
and the sound is just a little dated,
but this also is a fine performance.
It appears that finally the magnificent
old Saga LP has met its match, although
I will always cherish its memory.

All these works are
very sharply focused on the crucifixion,
the suffering and death of Jesus, his
heavy steps as he carries the cross
toward Calvary, and as such are gloomy
and tragic in mood. Liszt wrote the
Weinen Klagen Sorgen Sagen variations
on the ostinato of Bach’s Cantata
#12 while he was in mourning for
his son who died tragically young on
the threshold of a brilliant scholarly
career. The concluding chorale from
the same Bach cantata brings the work
to a close in a mood of hope. The piano
version is primary, the organ version
an arrangement thereof; the Searle catalogue
does not give the organ version a separate
number.

Since the artist is
not only organist at several churches
but also a teacher of religion, one
expects his performances of the solo
organ works to be intensely religious
in tone and expressive of a personal
conviction. While it is no doubt a devout
performance, it’s not a well-paced dramatic
one, tending to get very quiet and very
loud with little time spent in between.
A more ordered subordination of dynamic
levels would have better projected the
drama, but there is no doubt about the
artist’s intense personal involvement
in this music. This instrument could
hardly have been better shown off, with
dynamics from quieter than a whisper
to threshold of pain, as your surround
sound processor re-creates the original
five second die-away time acoustic of
the Riga Cathedral in your listening
room; even though the label makes no
mention of surround sound, but don’t
let that stop you. One of the finest
organ recordings I’ve ever heard, an
experience not to be missed.

Gábor Lehotka
gives a sonically more varied and dramatically
more effective performance. Jean-Pierre
LeGuay plays the enormous Notre Dame
Paris organ for a truly huge sounding
cathedral performance, also filling
your listening space with cathedral
acoustics via your surround sound processor.
Since these performances are all so
different, I suspect Mr. Searle is right,
the organ version isn’t really a new
edition, just the piano music printed
in organ format, leaving registrations,
etc., entirely to the discretion of
the performer.

The label and notes
refer to Les Morts as "Oraison;"
however, Liszt called it Trauerode
or Ode funèbre. Oraison,
or its English equivalent ‘orison,’
is a very old word meaning ‘prayer,’
and its use here connotes age and mystery
— in other words, a little bit of hype.
Trauerode makes use of fragments
of the same chorale tune as the WKSG
Variations so the two works go well
together. As with the Variations,
Genvrin’s performance is of an intense
personal mysteriousness whereas Elekes’
equally fine version is more conventionally
dramatic.

The English word "partition"
does not in modern usage correspond
to the French word partition as
this translator writes. The OED gives
this definition as #8 and labels it
as an obsolete or rare; a translator
should use the English "score"
or "full score". This is one
of those faux amis all of which
a good translator should know well.
Apart from this, Brian Downes’ translation
is unusually good.

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